WAS REALLY HIT AND MISS
TONY WATT has claimed Stanley Menzo slapped him as he launched a stinging attack on his former Lierse manager.
The Motherwell striker clashed with the Dutch boss during his 2013-14 campaign on loan with the Belgian side.
Menzo was fiercely critical of Watt’s fitness and repeatedly left him out of matchday squads.
Their hostility came to a head when Watt refused to shake his hand on the team bus.
Watt said: “He’s the only manager who has slapped me in the face.
“The day before a game he called a meeting and my head was already gone with him. I wasn’t listening.
“Menzo was looking at me saying, ‘This guy thinks he’s Messi, he keeps letting you down’. But we were winning games and I was flying. I asked him what he was talking about, I was scoring every week.
“Every day abroad you shake hands and when the time came I thought, ‘F*** that, I’m not shaking hands one more time, not a chance in hell’. I had given him all the respect I could.
“He came up the bus, shook every hand and when he went to shake mine I looked away.
“He just slapped my head. I was like, ‘What the f*** are you doing?’.
“He stormed down the bus saying, ‘He’s not playing, he’s not playing’.
“Eventually the boys spoke to him and said, ‘Right, you’re playing – but just don’t speak to him’.
“I went out and scored
BY ALAN MARSHALL two goals and was sitting in the changing room, smug as you like thinking, ‘Get it right up you’.”
Speaking on the Lower League Ramblings podcast, the Scotland international revealed Menzo slated his debut for the club despite him scoring within a minute of coming on against Kortrijk.
Watt said: “I came on for my first game and scored with my first touch.
“Then I go in the changing room after the game and he comes in and says, ‘That’s not good enough, you don’t work hard enough’. I had scored and ran about like a bluea **** fly!
“The next day he had me running and was shouting, ‘You don’t run enough, who do you think you are?’ From that day forward he was just an absolute egg.”
The situation came to a head in winter as Watt threatened to quit the club after being frozen out.
Lierse sporting director Tomas Radzinski talked him out of it and Watt said: “I phoned Tomas and said, ‘Listen, I’m going home mate, there’s no point me being here’.
“But he told me I’d be in the squad for the next game and told me Menzo was one game away from losing his job.
“So I get on at 0-0 against our big rivals Mechelen and I get the goal to make it 1-0, then it goes 2-0 and I dink the keeper to make it 3-0.
“He didn’t even look at me, didn’t say thanks. I’d just saved his job.”